


Demoiselles

by Odamaki



Series: The Sherlexicon [28]
Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Medical Student Ami
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 14:11:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5051488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odamaki/pseuds/Odamaki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An unexpected rash of murders that Sherlock can't solve, and Molly's got a new friend in the morgue. Attempting a semi-serious effort at a cracky kind of crossover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Demoiselles

**12: Demoiselle**

“Here we go- and this is the morgue.” 

Molly looks up at the door with surprise as it opens and a doctor is ushered in. She pauses, scalpel in hand, not sure if she should stop working and make herself known or if it’s OK to just carry on. It’d be quite nice to get everything weighed and shoved back in before lunchtime. 

“Miss Hooper-” 

No such luck. Molly puts down her scalpel and lifts off her goggles. “Good Morning, Dr. Burgh.” 

He’s one of those older, head-of-department types who rarely sticks a toe into the morgue, but she knows him by sight at least. The other doctor accompanying him is tiny in comparison. Dr. Burgh-rhymes with ‘Urgh’, Molly thinks, not for the first time, and the mnemonic is really altogether too fitting at that.

“This is Dr. Amy Mizoono, on faculty exchange from Berlin. We thought, seeing as you’re always busy down here, she could step in and spend some of her time here working with you.” 

Molly blinks. She’s a doctor? She looks like she’s barely scraping 22 years old, if that. “Oh. Sure.” She chews on her lip.

“Lovely, well, I’ll just let you two get on then- Any problems, You know where to find me.” Dr. Burgh breezes out. Molly is glad she’s not holding the scalpel. It could have been dangerous the way her blood pressure just spiked. It’s two-fold; Dr. Burgh’s whole nature is just somehow unerringly offensive to her, and a slight possessiveness of the morgue. Also if Sherlock turns up...

“I do actually have an interest in forensic pathology,” the other woman says, tone very carefully polite, once the door closes. “And it’s ‘Ami’ Mizuno, not ‘Amy’.” 

“Right-” Molly, flustered, grapples to pull her gloves off so she can shake hands with Doctor Ami-rhymes-with-clammy Mizuno-possibly-rhymes-with-‘what-do- _you_ -know’. 

“Well- um. Ami? I’m Molly.” Rhymes with ‘folly’, Molly adds mentally. She needs a better way of remembering names. Meanwhile ‘Clammy What-do-you-know?’ seems totally at ease despite Molly’s behaviour.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” 

She has very cool, dry hands, which is useful, Molly notes. Small hands too, and a sense of indefatigable calmness about her. To her surprise, she thinks she likes her. “Well, Welcome to St. Barts. You came from Berlin?” She adds, before pausing to wonder if that’s a bit of an off-colour question. Ami simply smiles. 

“From Tokyo, via Berlin. I hope you don’t mind, I’m actually researching technological development in forensic pathology in the form of scanning so I have a small computer I’d like to use.” 

“Oh.” Molly looks around. “Well, any of the counters are free, I suppose.”

“Thank you.”

She’s so polite, Molly thinks, putting on a fresh pair of gloves. Isn’t that a stereotype? Polite and stand-offish. She feels bad for thinking it but at the same time, the greater part of her says that it’s true. Then again, she’s not falling over herself to be welcoming either. Molly grits her teeth, tries not to sigh and pulls off her gloves again.

“I’m going to make some coffee,” she says, turning and making herself smile. It’s not like Dr. What is actually being that offensive. “Would you like some?”

The other woman’s face lights up and she puts a hand to her mouth with sudden recollection. “Oh! I almost forgot. I brought something with me- Just a moment.” She opens her messenger bag- it looks like one left over from High School or something, and Molly notices for the first time something not blandly professional about the woman- she has trinkets attached to the strap.

“Here!” Ami smiles, a little shy. “This is really good German coffee, and lebkuchen. That is, if you haven’t lost your appetite.”

“Um, yeah,” Molly says, once she’s realised that the last comment is a joke. “That sounds nice.” She takes the tin of biscuits held out on offer to her and then points to the trinkets. “What are those?”

Ami presses a hand to them and seems to thaw completely at the touch. “Presents, from my dearest friends. Before I left, I mean. This one’s a charm from my friend’s shrine, for protection. The others are just silly things, but I can’t bear to be without them.”

“That’s so nice,” Molly replies, suddenly touched. “Then they can always travel with you.” She feels a kind of strange, baseless remorse that she never had friends as good as that. Ami’s whole face lifts in a smile and Molly regrets her reluctance to make friends.

“Let’s get some of this coffee,” she suggests, “And then I’ll show you who I’ve got in the freezers.”

Ami all but glows. “I can’t wait,” she says.

 

—

Molly gets used to having company in the morgue. It’s nice, for once, to have someone else who can jump between conversations about post-mortem clotting to the problems of dealing with London’s hard water when it comes to having flyaway hair. Ami has no particular thoughts to offer on Molly’s various beloved TV shows, but she’s a good listener nonetheless. Likewise, Molly has nothing to add when Ami talks computers, but the other woman has a way of talking about the subject that is more meditative than lecturing.

Plus it’s just nice to meet another woman who is also a dab hand with a bone saw.

Ami mentions her friends often but in vague terms. Molly has yet to learn their names but strangely the longer they work together the more she feels like she’s being pulled into the periphery of an exceptional group of women. Allowed to peek in, maybe, but not one of them. She’s not sure how she feels about it.

It’s a month after Ami starts working in the morgue that they bring the first of a particular series of bodies in. Molly’s never seen anything like it.

“It’s a mummy,” she says, taken aback when the zipper’s been pulled back. The face is desiccated to the point where the teeth jut out like quills. “How old is this?”

Lestrade, flustered, wipes his sweating hands on his handkerchief. “As far as we know, six hours.”

“Six hours!?” Molly can’t believe her ears. She undoes the body bag fully. The skin is dusty leather, the belly is nothing but a scooping hollow that is almost touching the spine and the whole form is utterly rigid.

“Test it- we need DNA but everything else matches this woman; Kathleen Thompson.” He drops a rough printout on the table. “Went missing Tuesday, but we’ve got a witness who locates her at Paddington Station just after 6 AM this morning. We’re waiting on CCTV to verify that.”

“Oh my God.”

“Excuse me, may I?”

Ami has her little computer out- it’s some sort of palmtop of her own design, and she’s blipping away on it, intensely focussed. Lestrade squints at her. He looks at Molly and mouths, “Who?”

Molly steps between the corpse and Lestrade to answer him. “Um, Lestrade this is Dr. Mizuno, she’s working here with me on a research project. Ami, this is Detective Lestrade from Scotland Yard. He’s um… also interested in corpses.”

“Detective inspector and not really- it’s my job,” Lestrade says hastily.

Ami looks up and a certain shy panic crosses her face briefly and then she bobs slightly in greeting. “Pleased to meet you.”

“We’ll get on with things here, Greg.” Molly says firmly. “I’ll get your results as soon as I can. Are you going to get… him in?”

Lestrade glances between the two of them, at a loss. “Well, of course I bloody am. He’d never forgive me if I didn’t.”

Molly glances at Ami and sighs. “I thought you might say that.”

——

Sherlock’s flounce through the lab on one of his grand case chases does not go according to plan. He pauses at the sight of the newcomer and then dismisses her. Ami for her part stands there in silence, watching as he gives the corpse a once-over. He’s fascinated; they’ve never encountered anything of the kind and he’s having fun.

“Not six hours, obviously. You’ve been played, Lestrade, of course.”

“So it’s an… old body? How old?”

“Who is it then?” Lestrade wants to know. “And why’s it so similar to Kathleen Thompson?”

Sherlock whisks a finger at a few things and starts rattling off information like a gatling gun. He’s pulled to an abrupt halt when Ami suddenly pipes up with an ‘Excuse me.’

“What?”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think the forensic staff made any mistake,” she says, polite as ice. She pushes her glasses firmly up her nose. “In fact, I helped Molly run those tests myself. I can vouch for their accuracy.”

Sherlock scoffs, and whilst nowhere near as rude, Lestrade and Molly can’t help but doubt it too.

“It could have been contaminated…” Molly says, thinking out loud.

“The chance of it being contaminated is very small, given the range of samples taken and tests undertaken.” She beeps at her computer and then sticks a list of results under Sherlock’s nose. He frowns, reads, frowns harder and then starts questioning her at such a pace that Molly is taken aback. Ami doesn’t even flinch. In fact, she seems weirdly fired up, responding to his every question with not only an answer but evidence and the back and forth reels off into such obscurities that even Molly looses the thread.

She moves to stand back on the sidelines of the battle with Lestrade to whom the conversation might as well be in Ancient Babylonian for all he can comprehend. Instead he watches the people, his face a rising question mark.

“Is she… flirting with him, or about to bite his head off?” Lestrade asks, at a loss. Molly stares at him.

“No!” She says at once, and then hesitates, looking back. “No, I don’t think so? He’s not interested anyway, is he? He’s not. That’d be ridiculous.”

“Are you alright there Molls?”

“Fine. I think we should separate them, before he says…” She glances at Lestrade. “One of those things he says.”

Lestrade tugs on his collar. “Good point,” he says and as the conversation comes to an abrupt halt and a pair of glares, he goes to break up the staring contest.

Ruffled, Sherlock barks a few things about this test and the other and examining the evidence from the area where the body was found in more detail. It seems that somewhere along the line he’s won a point over Ami, because she has no counter argument to his demands.

“Lestrade!” Sherlock says, batting at the man as he sweeps towards the door. “Back to work- come on.”

Helplessly, Lestrade follows, sparing a moment to shrug at Molly and look apologetic.

“Sorry about Sherlock,” Molly says after they’ve gone, looking at Ami cautiously. She can’t decide if she doesn’t want Ami to like him out of some kind of irrational need to have Sherlock’s indifference all to herself, or if she wants the woman to like Sherlock because he can use all the strength and kindness of friendship he can get.

“It’s quite alright,” Ami says coolly. She pushes her glasses up her nose. “I won’t lose to such a rude opponent next time.”

“Sorry?” Molly blinks. Ami’s glasses flash. She mutters something in Japanese.

“What?”

“Oh, excuse me,” Ami smiles, a touch self-conscious. “He has an amazing level of intellect.”

‘Was that,’ Molly wonders, ‘Japanese for “I’m going to kick his arse to kingdom come”?’

“Yeeesss…” She agrees aloud. “Not so good at the social thing, mind.”

“Mm,” Ami says diplomatically, reaching for her computer. She adds, voice a little firmer. “We need to get to work. This is no time to be slacking.”

Molly startles and finds herself nodding. “R-right! Yes, let’s crack on, shall we?”

____

Ami is a slave driver. She seems tireless and relentless about keeping Molly on task. She’s not rude or even offensive, she’s just somehow impossible to say ‘no’ to. Even when Molly starts flagging, Ami somehow manages to multitask all her work, finishing off a stack of data and returning with two robust mugs of the strongest coffee Molly’s ever had. They virtually vibrate through the remaining chemical work, in time with the oscillators.

“Amazing, we’re getting exact replications of the results,” Ami says finally, pushing her glasses up onto the top of her head. She flashes Molly a happy, satisfied smile. “We’ve worked hard!”

Molly all but sags over her bench. “I’ll say,” she replies, hoping it’s over. My god. No wonder she’s made a doctorate in three languages before she’s 30; Ami is a machine.

‘Imagine if she and Sherlock had babies,’ Molly’s brain comments, unwelcome. ‘They’d be evil.’

Ami looks at her watch and rubs at her eyes. “It’s getting quite late. We should call it a night.” Molly yawns.

“Yes,” she agrees. “Please.”

Ami chuckles, sweetness and light again. “Do you need a ride home? I was going to take a taxi.”

“Oh, I- well, we could but where do you live?”

“It’s no problem,” Ami tucks her computer into her back. “I’m going on to my friend’s house.”

“I live up towards Swiss Cottage,” Molly warns her. “It’ll be expensive if we live in opposite directions.” It’ll be expensive anyway.

“That’s no trouble at all. I’m staying in the centre,” Ami says, like central London is a common address.

“You are?”

“I’m sharing with a friend. Please, my treat. Just this once.” She smiles and Molly thinks about the night bus and then gives in. If Ami wants to cough up for a taxi, then Molly’s not going to argue. Feel guilty, sure, but she’ll take the offer.

They find one outside the hospital with only minor difficulty. Molly sags into the seat with releif, one step away from toeing her shoes off. Toby must be climbing the walls feeling starved and neglected by now, poor pudgy-tat. Molly checks her phone for messages, Ami sits in comfortable silence.

The car leaves Barts and purrs westwards into Marylebone where it comes to a halt as Ami directs outside of a large period building.

“You live there?” Molly blurts, looking at it. Ami looks surprised. “Yes, though only while I’m in London. It’s just a temporary rental.” She picks up her bag and climbs out of the car, speaking briefly to the driver.

Molly shrinks back into her seat, thinking. ‘Oh my God,’ she thinks, ‘She’s cute, smart and loaded. It’s not fair. She’s not even gross about any of it.’

“Molly,” Ami says, hesitantly, before she leaves. Molly leans forward to look out. “Yes?”

Ami manages to look small inside of her cardigan. “Thank you for all your hard work today. I really enjoyed working with you.”

“Oh,” Molly finds herself smiling and then speaking the truth, “You’re welcome. Me too. It was actually sort of fun.”

Ami smiles back. “Let’s be friends,” she offers, straight-forward and without guile and Molly softens.

“Ok,” she says, holding back a laugh. ‘How high school,’ she thinks, but it doesn’t annoy her. It feels oddly refreshing to be asked outright. “Deal. Let’s be friends.” She reaches out a hand and they shake on it with pseudo-solemness. The taxi driver clears his throat and Molly hastily waves Ami off.

Ami watches the taxi pull away and hopes Molly will get home safely. She hopes also that she won’t be dragged into this business with the youma. ‘I’ll do my very best to protect you,’ she promises silently. She turns the key in the lock and steps inside, hanging her soft grey coat next to the gold puffa jacket already there.

「ただいま、美奈ちゃん。」She calls. Someone upstairs clatters out of the bedroom, the open door making the muffled music louder. There’s a bump and then a friendly face half-hidden in a cloud of blonde hair leans over the bannister with a smile and a greeting.”

「亜美ちゃん、おかえり～！さっきしゃべりした人誰の？」

Ami just chuckles. “Never mind,” she calls up. “Come down. Let’s have dinner and I’ll tell you what I’ve discovered.”

___  
___

 

Sherlock’s in an enormous snit. Something about an uppity forensics officer or something else, John can’t either get him to explain properly, or pause for breath between grumpy complaints. He mollifies slightly when John soothes the wounded ego with a couple of comments on the case, but something’s clearly got his back up.

“So,” John says, “Just remind me what I’m looking for here?” He’s standing in the middle of the alleyway. Sherlock waves an arm impatiently.

“Anything. Scuff marks, dropped items, leaves, anything. The CCTV shows Kathleen Thompson walking down here shortly before she vanishes and reappears as a corpse in the next lane over.”

They go over the alleyway with a fine-toothed comb until the sun starts to set. Lestrade joins John in the fruitless art of Sherlock watching and Sherlock refuses to leave. He’s narrowed down the sequence of events to this one place and he refuses to admit that he’s wrong. Something happened here; there must be some trace of it.

When the light fades, he opts to crawl about with his torch instead. John’s getting cold and annoyed. They move slowly, slowly round to the street where the body was found and it’s only as Sherlock moves to touch the tape that they hear a noise.

It’s something like a hiss, a dry, long sound of pure malice.

John straightens, all of his hackles rising as something in his hind brain kicks into gear and tells him ‘Move!’ He’s turning to locate the exits, to see the blind spots, to locate the source of the noise when something drops on them from above like a stone. “What was-“ Lestrade starts.

It is long-limbed and fast. Before John can react, it’s swiped Sherlock from his feet and, hissing, makes a lunge at John. With nimbleness born of terror, John throws himself to the side, avoiding the rake of what he can only describe as claws. Lestrade crashes in the opposite direction, getting tangled in the police tape.

‘What is that?’ John screams in his head, ‘that’s not animal.’

It’s not human either. It’s not real- it can’t be real.

Sherlock’s trying to rise when it throws something at him. John can’t see where it’s got the stuff from, nor what exactly it is it’s thrown; it’s some kind of… ‘dark light’ seems to be the most fitting description and yet how inaccurate it sounds even in John’s head.

Whatever it is, it smothers Sherlock, constricts and he gives a yell of the likes John never wants to hear again. The torch goes out. The scream cuts short.

“Sherlock!”

In the darkness, it feels like John’s able to see it better. It’s a woman, John realises. What he thought were claws might be knives. She swipes at him again with her free hand and he falls, aiming a kick at her legs. Long. ‘Stilts?’ John wonders. She runs out of whatever stuff it is she’s sprayed at Sherlock and turns on him. He can see her profile properly now; not a snout but a mouth and a nose under a mask. Ears; pretty feminine ears, and the hair is long and soft-looking.

John scrabbles back on his heels, the concrete biting into his palms as he tries to rise to his feet. Sherlock has collapsed limp to the floor and shouting his name does nothing other than to make the woman- the _thing’s_ \- head turn fully towards him.

“Jesus,” John breaths. She has no eyes.

She has no human eyes.

John’s never seen anything like it; not in all his years of oddity and mayhem with Sherlock, not in the chaos of a warzone across the sea, never even in his years of medical study. It’s horror made flesh, pure and simple. Something in his gut freezes; an instinctual part of him that is afraid out of a sense of self-preservation rather than cowardice.

His hand twitches, looking for the trigger of a gun that he doesn’t have. The creature bares it’s teeth on him, raises it’s hands and from the boney tips of it’s fingers, against all biological odds, a set of claws comes sliding free.

‘It’s going to kill me,’ John thinks, ‘and then it will come back to finish off Sherlock.’ His mind flies to a number of more disturbing prospects. ‘To eat him.’ That’s what makes his stomach knot- he knows in his bones that it is hungry. Not with the animal hunger of a normal beast but something that will never be satisfied. It sees him as prey. He is just walking calories to this thing.

It’s toying with him, advancing slowly, making him scuttle back on his arse and then he fetches up against something rough- a wall. He grasps at it with one hand behind his back, turning the disadvantage of the corner into leverage to get his feet up under him. Maybe he can rush it.

It might jab him with it’s claws or swipe at his eyes, but he’s fast; he can duck, he can hammer home a punch to it’s sternum that might knock it off balance enough for him to get past. He’d be injured, but he might not be dead. Maybe it’d fall over on those disproportionately long legs. Again his hands grope at the air, seeking a weapon. It’s too bad he just can’t wish one into creation.

He crouches slightly. The thing hisses. He’s about to make his move when a shout makes him start and then he’s suddenly half-blinded by a streak of light.

It takes a chunk out of the beast.

It staggers back howling, and John is paralysed, caught on the brink of running and looking to see what, and where that thing came from. He catches a glimpse of a figure, arm raised and another light and then another cry.

“-ty SHOCK!”

He ducks as the laser roars over his head, brilliant gold, leaving him with afterimages that make his vision blur.

The creature screams and through watering eyes, John sees it teeter on it’s heels. It flails at the air and then, to his utter disbelief, it begins to crumble. The dust falls into a neat pile. John staggers, from the shock rather than injury.

“What?” He begins.

A pair of heels click to the tarmac in front of him and the figure is there at the same moment Lestrade finally makes it to the end of the alleyway. It’s a woman; or maybe just a girl, John can’t make out how old she is. She crouches for a moment over Sherlock’s body and he moves to shout. Lestrade fumbles for his night stick.

“Don’t move!”

She straightens up and flashes him a confident smile, holding up both hands empty.

“No need to worry,” she says and her voice is as strange as her face. “He needs to rest, but he’s going to be just fine.”

John wants to scrub a hand over his eyes but he daren’t in case something happens. As it is, he’s looking dead at her and yet he can’t seem to make out the detail of her face although something in his core tells him firmly that she is beautiful.

“Who are you?” Lestrade says, as dumbstruck as John. Unlike John, he’s looking her up and down; part unwitting admiration, part copper’s instinct to get as much detail as possible of a potential suspect. It’s only by following his gaze that John realises the absurdity of her outfit.

That’s a very short skirt to be leaping off of buildings in.

‘She jumped from the roof,’ his brain adds, before his thoughts get there. ‘That’s a three-storey building. That’s not possible’.

And yet he’d seen it. He’d seen her throw lasers.

“The agent of Love and Beauty, the soldier in a sailor suit. I am Sailor Venus,” she says, and as ridiculous as the words are, John believes them as firmly as she seems to. She flashes Lestrade a wink and throws a grin in John’s direction that makes them both feel about 10 years too old and a bit grubby, and then she waves.

“Take care now!” She crouches a fraction and then faster than they can react she’s leapt, sailing away back onto the roofs. There’s one final click of heels, a curl of blonde hair vanishing over the gutter and she’s gone.

“What?” John says again, staring at the blank patch of night sky where she’s gone. Lestrade moves towards him, staring also. Their movement stirs the dust at their feet. Sherlock groans.

John turns at once to tend to him, leaving Lestrade still staring after the figure, his truncheon dangling uselessly from one hand. Something in his memory has stirred and it’s right on the tip of his tongue and yet he can’t grasp it.

A girl. He remembers there was some kind of rumour about a girl, about five or six years ago.

His head hurts. He knows he knows something, but for some reason he can’t remember it clearly.

Behind him he hears Sherlock slur, “What happened?” and John blustering away the question. What just happened indeed, Lestrade wonders. He has no idea how he’s meant to file this.

“Lestrade? Some help?”

He turns back, holstering his truncheon, and helps John lump Sherlock to the main road. Sherlock’s face is white; John can’t figure out what’s wrong with him other than the plain fact that he seems to be exhausted. Lestrade orders them a car and while they wait, he scrapes up a spoonful of the dust into his handkerchief and shoves it into Sherlock’s pocket. He has no idea what he’s seen tonight but he’s dammed if he’s not covering all his bases.

This was too weird to be real.

“Go home,” he says to John, “Keep an eye on that one; I’ll clear up here. Get some official…” He glances back at the dust with trepidation. “Samples. I’ll come round in the morning.”

“What happened? John?” Sherlock slurs again, louder, reeling. John rebalances him as he wobbles.

“I’m here.”

He doesn’t question Lestrade; too concerned about Sherlock and with his hands literally too full putting him into the back of the taxi. Lestrade waves them off and then finally calls for his team, expression clouded.

There would be records somewhere. He scrawls himself a note and puts it deep into his inside pocket where it can’t be lost. By tomorrow, Sherlock might be able to shed some light on things and if not, well, there’s one thing he can do far better than Sherlock and that’s trawl through paperwork.

‘Something about a girl, and a fire,’ he thinks. ‘I know it.’

____  
____

 

Ami leaves the window open at the top of the house. ‘Like Mrs. Darling,’ she thinks, with a little smile. She sits up late, tapping through data until she hears the click of heels on the window sill and the latch being closed.

“Welcome home,” she calls.

“I’m back,” Mina stifles a yawn as she enters the room, dropping onto Ami’s bed carelessly. “I’m beat!”

“Did anything happen?”

“Mm,” Mina looks at the ceiling, troubled. “There was another attack. Another low-level youma, so it wasn’t difficult, but it attacked two people this evening. They were ok, just, it was strange…”

“This is worrying,” Ami says, turning on her chair so she can look at Mina properly. It’s not the strength of the youma that bothers them. It’s the fact that they are appearing at all. “I’ve been trying to predict where they’re coming from but so far I can’t come up with anything reliable.”

Mina gives in to another yawn. “It’s ok. We can keep patrolling until you do, and then we’ll smash ‘em.” She twinkles at her with bravado. If it were Usagi, Ami might tempted to chide her to take the threat more seriously, but she’s known Mina for long enough to know what the other woman is feeling. She turns off the lamp on the desk.

“We’ll just have to keep doing out best,” she says. “I got an e-mail from Rei, by the way.”

Mina sits up, enthusiastic again. “What did she say?”

“It was only short- she’s in the mountains somewhere, investigating. So far, she’s not found anything going on in China, so she’s going to move south. Usagi says everything is still quiet in Tokyo.”

“So if it’s just here…” Mina taps her chin, thinking. “That’s good. Maybe this is the only hot spot. If so, let’s focus on tracking the source and then maybe we can all assemble here and put things to rights.”

“Right,” Ami gets up and stretches. “I should get some sleep.”

Mina reluctantly gives up the bed. “Me too.” She pats her cheeks. “Gotta have that beauty sleep.” She turns to leave and then pauses at the door.

“Ami, actually there’s one more thing.”

Ami lifts her eyebrows, questioningly.

“The attack tonight. I’m not as sharp as Rei-chan but… I don’t know. I thought I sensed something.”

“What sort of thing?”

“I’m not sure. There were three men and… I don’t know. Seeing them just felt strange. Not bad, just- oh I don’t know.” She gives up with a shrug. “I just got a weird feeling like I recognised them, though I totally didn’t.”

“Maybe just a long day,” Ami says, “but let me know if you sense it again. It could be a clue.”

____  
____

**Author's Note:**

> TBC?


End file.
